Wilt's Most Amazing Feats Off The Court

Get Serious!

November 21, 1991|By TONY GABRIELE Daily Press

One reads that sports legend Wilt Chamberlain, penning his memoirs, claims he has had close personal relations with some 20,000 women.

This is a startling number, particularly for those fellows who have trouble getting a date for Saturday night. I mean, we'd been told Wilt's the all-time champion rebounder, but we thought they were talking about basketball.

Granted, it would be even more impressive to claim you had made love to the same woman 20,000 times. That would be a truly magnificent achievement. But Mr. Chamberlain's claim is remarkable on its own terms, and it deserves further examination.

Now, we will not appeal to prurient interests here. This will be a sober examination of time management and logistics.

In fact, for the purposes of this exercise, let's say our subject claims he has sat down and shared an ice-cream sundae with a different woman on 20,000 occasions.

To begin with: Normally, you wouldn't think a man would want more than one ice-cream sundae a day, would you? Oh, if you had a hearty appetite, you might have one in the afternoon and another in the evening, once in a while.

But on the other hand, there'd be an occasional day when you had a tummy ache and skipped the sundae. So it would balance out, wouldn't it?

There are 365 days in the year. That means that at the rate of one ice-cream sundae per day, it would take you nearly 55 years to down 20,000 sundaes.

Clearly, we are talking about a much heavier rate of sundae consumption.

Next, consider that finding a person to share your sundae with you is not just a matter of hanging around Baskin-Robbins and taking a number. At the very least, you must introduce yourself to the other person, engage in a bit of conversation, and persuade her that you would be pleasant company at the soda fountain. So we are talking about the investment of a fair amount of time here.

I can recall my shy efforts, as a teen-ager, to ask a girl to share a booth with me at the ice-cream parlor. The preliminary stammering alone, before I could get to the point, could take me as much as 15 minutes. Evidently Mr. Chamberlain is a man of suaver social gifts than I possessed.

Then, too, no matter how persuasive you are, no matter how enticing your promises of hot fudge flowing down fluffy mounds of whipped cream onto scoops of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, a certain percentage of women will decline your invitation for sundae-sharing. You know how some women are, always dieting. That would also have to be figured into the time spent in pursuit of ice cream.

Now consider that this case involves a pro basketball player, later a coach. You know what the pro basketball season is like. It's endless. The next season starts about 48 hours after the previous season ended. And then there are all those airplane flights across the country.

This is a severe time constraint for a dedicated pursuer of co-ed sundae-spooning, although you do get to meet a lot of airline stewardesses.

So if Wilt is telling the truth - and I have no proof he isn't - he has managed to post his record in the face of daunting obstacles. He must have devoted virtually every available hour, with astonishing success, to the pursuit of sundaes - er, I mean women. If that is the case, two questions remain:

1. Why isn't he pulling down big fees by lecturing business executives on efficient time management?

2. Where did he find the time to write his book?

And if you're having some daydreams of your own in this respect, please: We must caution you folks at home not to try this.